My Story

Hello and welcome to Earth and Bloom!

I’m Lucy, and if you have a moment i’d like to share with you why I started Earth and Bloom, and what I hope it can do for you.

An unexpected surprise

In 2012 I began my degree in Psychology. On the first day of University I met my future husband, who was also doing a Psychology degree, but was two years ahead. After a few years of dating I unexpectedly fell pregnant. It was scary. I was young and we had no money. We were living in a student share house at the time and although Gabe was just about to finish his degree, I was only in my second year.

But we did what we could to pull it together. We moved out of our student accommodation and into our own house, if you can call it that. It was more like a cabin on our friend’s property! We gathered what we could to prepare for parenthood, and in 2014 our little girl Willow entered the world, just as Gabe started his Ph.D.

Only the beginning

I’ll admit, parenthood wasn’t exactly what I had expected. I expected to fall madly and irrevocably in love with our squishy baby right away. But things didn’t quite work out like that. Instead, she had severe growth restriction (wasn’t exactly squishy) and she couldn’t latch so we had terrible problems breastfeeding. She was so hungry all the time that she would just scream and cry for hours. I ended up with a severe case of postpartum anxiety. Not to mention I had to sit my exams a few weeks after the birth.

But I managed to pull it together, just. We sorted out her feeding and after 6 months I went back to University, determined to finish my degree. There were many times that I almost gave up, but something inside me, including the unwavering support of my family and friends, drove me to keep going.

Big changes ahead

In mid 2016, Gabe (my husband by this point) got accepted for a post-doctoral position in the U.S.A. We knew that this was the career opportunity of a life time! But this meant that Gabe had to finish his thesis in record time, and I still had 3 courses left to complete my degree. I ended up taking on full time uni work plus picking up all the household and parenting duties during this time. It was beyond stressful. I didn’t know how we would make this work, but I believed we could, and we did.

We sold all of our belongings to afford our plane tickets (we were poor students, remember?). And on Christmas day 2016, we took our little family (along with 4 suitcases) across the world to start the next chapter in our lives.

We stayed in a motel for 3 nights after we arrived, before moving into our empty apartment. I remember having an out-of-body moment, sitting in our completely furniture-less bedroom, thinking that there was no way we could do this. We were so far from our family and friends, in a new country where we knew nobody! But we had made it this far through all the crazy, and I knew that this was just another test for us, one that I was certain we would pass.

And so, Earth and Bloom was born

We’ve been in the U.S for almost five months now, and not being able to work has given me a lot of time for reflection. I’ve thought about how our little family was not only able to survive, but to thrive during these last few years. Not to mention, living in an empty apartment without a car for a month forced me to get creative when it came to entertaining a toddler!

I’m an intensely creative person, and since being here I have poured myself into making things. Painting, cooking, sewing, crochet – you name it, i’ve probably tried to make it (tried being the operative word).

I am inspired by natural and gentle parenting methods, and I would like to share that inspiration with you.

I am by no means a parenting expert, but I know that i’m not alone. There are so many moms out there like me, who are trying to work or study. Moms who would benefit from a resource about natural parenting in our crazy, modern world.

I hope you stay a while and take a look around, and maybe find something that inspires you.

Lucy

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